


"I didn't want her to be alone"

by SelkieWife



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Abigail Warren - Freeform, Angst, Angst & Hurt/Comfort Thursday, Angst Thursday, Blood, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Charlotte Wells- Centric, Gen, Harlots Season 3 Spoilers, I've tagged ships because she is reflecting on them, Isaac Pincher (mentioned), Isabella Fitzwilliam (mentioned), Kate Bottomley - Freeform, Lucy Wells - Freeform, Lydia Quigley - Freeform, Margaret Wells - Freeform, POV Charlotte Wells, Paralysis, Regret, Visions, but it is more general Charlotte
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:14:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26386213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelkieWife/pseuds/SelkieWife
Summary: Charlotte's last thoughts as she dies. The title comes from Kate Bottomley Quigley's explanation for holding Charlotte's hand - that she didn't want her to be alone. I wrote this for the same reason. I didn't want her to be alone.The song is from Episode 4 when they discover Charlotte's body.One Morning in Maymusic and lyrics by Rael Jones.
Relationships: Past Charlotte Wells/Isaac Pincher, Past Daniel Marney/Charlotte Wells, Past Isabella Fitzwilliam/Charlotte Wells
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Harlots Week 2020





	"I didn't want her to be alone"

A pain at the back of the neck. Warm blood spilling, gushing around her head. A shattering deep inside. And then nothing.

And then 

something….

From a distance, Charlotte hears the plaintive voice of her ma singing soft and low in the early morning while she stays abed in a pretense of sleep.

_In the clear morning dew  
As I lay down to muse  
A fair maiden of honor appeared in my view_

She back in their old rooms in Covent Garden when she was small. The lullaby grows louder from the next room and she knows her ma would love nothing more but to cosset her up like a baby and sing to her while the sun rises before beginning their hard day. Yet she doesn’t go. She knows she should want to but, something keeps her. 

_Says I, pretty maid  
Let me not see your frown  
But as these words were spoken  
Her tears trickle down._

The distance between them suddenly feels boundless. She tries to pull herself up in the bed as her mother’s voice continues to call to her like a siren. But the lyrics bounce and echo against the walls as if they are being sung in a grand mansion. And there is blood everywhere, pooling in her bed. She tries to lift herself and run to her mother for comfort, to let her fold her in her arms. But she is bleeding… she is broken. She can’t move. _Please… Ma._ If she could just have more time to hold her.

_While the moon does shine clear  
I will mourn my sweet dear  
Over mountains, clear fountains  
Where no one would hear_

She is back at Isabella’s and she isn’t getting out of this. The realization feels as sudden and shocking as it feels numb. She’s still here but her body is not. It’s a dead thing beneath her. And the blood… the blood is spreading all over the marble floor. Isabella’s pristine floor. She’s dirtied it all and it’s the worst kind of mess. She would laugh but no sound comes from her throat.

_While the moon does shine clear  
And the river does flow  
The fair maid of the morning  
Has many a foe_

A face swims into her view. It’s that poor mad girl from earlier this evening. Lydia’s “daughter.” Well, it would figure this is the last face she would see before being turned off. At least it is a kind face. A kind face with kind eyes and a kind hand pressed into hers.

_In the clear morning dew  
As I lay down to muse  
A fair maiden of honor appeared in my view_

If she could speak. If she could only speak, she would plead with her to run and find Isabella. If she could just _see_ her one last time. Her lady. She had never seen the sights she had dreamed to see in this life. But there were wonders to be found in the blue oceans of Isabella's eyes. _Damned and cursed._ They were quite a pair... until they weren’t. Until it became clear that Isabella did not feel as strong. That her daughter would always come first. As well she should. Charlotte didn’t have much experience with daughters coming first. But Isabella’s child should naturally come before the sly, backstreet pimp Charlotte had become. 

She had ruined Abigail, that sweet trusting girl. And she sold her girls at Greek Street. Same as Quigley. Same as Ma. Same as Isaac Pincher. She knew it as soon as he told her, “This trade turns us into rats.” Well, if he was a rat then so was she. They were the true “damned” pair. _Girl sellers. Child spoilers._ It made her want to burn her house to the ground herself. He just happened to be the one that lit the flame.

 _Is he looking down on me now? On the ruination of my body? Oh, why did I put myself in peril for that man?_ But she knows the answer. She thought if she could find a pocket of goodness in him, perhaps there was still some in herself. But it is all lost now.

She looks up again into Quigley’s daughter’s face but is met instead with the face of Abigail Warren. Her accusing eyes make her want to shrink away, but she cannot move a muscle. 

“You’re cursed,” Abigail says to her, her voice thick with venom and tears. 

_I know. I am. I’m sorry,_ she wants to whisper. I’m so sorry. A tear falls down her face. She had tried so hard to save her. She had wanted so much to save her… she had wanted _so much..._

To make a corner of this misshapen world right. To see something beyond London’s mucky streets. To sail the salt filled seas. The horizons of possibility. To keep herself and be her own master. To live free and know the sweetness of love, unshackled by the manacles of money. 

Her ma’s voice sings relentlessly in her broken head and she realizes one of her shoes was knocked off when she hit the cold, hard marble. _I can’t die without shoes like a common bunter. I’m a Wells woman…_ she thinks ridiculously, and she can hear her own laughter rattling about inside her head.

Her ma’s song has reached a mournful crescendo and the haunting ballad has now become a jaunty tune. She finds herself standing in her shoes once more. Unharmed. Whole. 

She doesn’t want to look, but eventually her eyes travel down to the corpse at her feet, twisted and broken in that pool of blood. But when she looks down she sees it has been laid out on a tavern table, with wildflowers and candles placed all around it. 

_She’s had every lord and trooper_  
Leaves her lovers in a stooper  
Riding high no man can dupe her! 

Her sweet sister puts two coins on the corpse’s eyelids. “My first harlots coins, Mary,” Sprat says to their old friend. But it is not Mary Cooper’s body. It Charlotte’s own. 

And then he’s there, once again, at her back. Daniel Marney with a mouth full of gifts. His lilting voice offering her free chat to help her swallow the tears in her throat. Her eyes pool as he leans in close and pours his comfort into her ear once more.

_“I looked down into the waters and saw fish. So bright they hurt my eyes. Little jewels; some smaller than minnows, some bigger than pigs. It was another world down there; green and blue eden. This life is full of wonder, Charlotte Wells.”_

As the last tear trails down her face, her eyes dart delight.


End file.
